In this Issue:

Bead Museum Move Seamless

Book on Spanish Colonial Beads

Bead News Flash

No. 3

Reporter:

Pete Francis

Seamless Transition for Bead Museum Move

The Bead Museum of Prescott, AZ has made final preparations to move to Glendale, Arizona in 1999. The transition will be seamless. The Museum will remain open and fully operational with new and permanent exhibits in the Prescott facility until July 16th. On that date, it will close in Prescott.

In the meantime, much of the general storage of archival material, artifacts not on exhibit, and books will have been moved to the new quarters at 5754 West Glenn Drive, Glendale, AZ 85301. Also, from February when occupation begins in Glendale, there will be several small exhibits on view. These will be added to as time passes. There will, therefore, be no cessation of Bead Museum activity for the public during the transition.

Cheryl Cobern-Browne, the Managing Director, will have The Bead Museum Store in Glendale open sometime in February. Gabrielle and Ted Liese, the founders of The Bead Museum say, "Her (Cobern-Browne’s) energy and enthusiasm are stupendous and contagious and we believe this move is the best thing that could happen for the growth and progress of The Bead Museum. We are very grateful to the City of Glendale Council members and to Cheryl for making this possible."

Publication Set for Book on Spanish Colonial Beads

The book on the beads of St. Catherines, GA, the northernmost Spanish mission site along the Atlantic coast is scheduled to be published in the year 2000. Co-authors Pete Francis and Lori Pendleton of the American Museum of Natural History are planning on preparing the text and plates for the book by the end of 1999.

St. Catherines is one of the most intensely studied colonial sites in the Americas. Over 57,000 beads have been excavated there. They tell many stories about life at the site, 17th century beadmaking in Venice and Spain, the continuation of a bead tradition thought to have died out 500 years before, the place of St. Catherines in the Spanish province of La Florida, and the world-wide trade network that linked this outpost of the Spanish Empire to places around the globe.